The 80's cult sci-fi horror film, The Deadly Spawn, is going to see life on a new entertainment medium - Blu-Ray. According to Amazon.com, The Deadly Spawn will be released on Blu-Ray January 24th, 2012, all thanks to Elite Entertainment. In The Deadly Spawn, two campers unleash an alien parasite from a meteorite, which then makes its way to the basement of an old house. The alien soon comes in conflict with four young teenagers, and one pre-teen boy, who are determined to stop it before it devours all of humanity.

The bonus features will include a commentary track, a still gallery, casting footage, a gag reel, a theatrical trailer and TV spot, an enhanced opening scene (hopefully no CGI), television review footage, and much more!(read more...)

To me, the horror film genre is so close to being past beyond saving, with only certain films giving me a slight glimmer of hope for the future (Trick 'r Treat). This is mainly because the genre is completely flooded with several mainstream remakes of classic horror films, first being started off with Gus Van Sant's shot by shot remake of Psycho in 1998. Now, don't get me wrong, there have been several good remakes that pay homage to the original while also taking a concept into an entirely different direction (The Thing, The Fly, The Blob, etc). But being in a generation where horror remakes are the norm, it's frankly just getting tiring to see remakes of classics (Halloween, Friday the 13th, etc) and obscure cult favorites (Black Christmas, Maniac, etc) being made and released year after year.(read more...)

Since its publication last July, Jason
Zinoman's Shock Value has received more mainstream press -
and largely favorable mainstream press - than most critical
analyses of horror cinema in recent years. The attention is
understandable, as this is a well-written account of a pivotal period
in the genre (the late '60s to early '80s) that's also
accessible to a general readership. It's not aimed purely at
cinephiles and academics or the fanatical horror fandom. It also
doesn't hurt that, in this age of information overload, the book is
a quick read or that Zinoman writes regularly for The New York
Times (mainly covering theater). Even in a time of a
historically fractured mass media, the "Gray Lady" still has
clout.(read more...)

I
believe anyone who has read my review of Maniac
knows my feelings towards the film. It was and still is a serious,
chilling and psychological slasher film, right in the same vein
of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
But it looks like no horror or exploitation film from the 70's and
80's are safe anymore from the remake virus.

On
November 4th,
2011, it was announced that Elijah Wood of Lord
of the Rings and Sin
City fame is set to play Joe
Spinell's most infamous role as Frank Zito, a man who is constantly
haunted by visions of his own abusive mother, and takes it upon
himself to murder and scalp women as a way of gaining revenge.(read more...)

Death casts a large shadow in all of
Val Lewton's RKO horror productions, but never larger than in Isle
of the Dead. Characters drop like flies as both science and
superstition prove inept against the advances of the Grim Reaper in
this foreboding tale set amid war, disease and encroaching madness.

Perhaps the most flawed of Lewton's
chillers, this is also one of his most memorable and, in its
climactic moments, the most outright frightening. The story was
inspired by Lewton's fascination with Arnold Böcklin's painting
of the same name, which can be seen under the opening credits and
represented in the background as a Greek general (Boris Karloff) and
American war correspondent (Marc Cramer) approach a small island
where the general's wife is buried.(read more...)

Call it an irrational fear, but wax figures give me the creeps. I recognize the artistic talent behind each of these seemingly lifelike sculptures, but the features have an off-putting radiance that resounds uncannily with me. Thankfully I must not be the only one with unease toward these waxworks given the effectiveness of André De Toth's House of Wax as a horror film. Building off the premise of 1933's Mystery of the Wax Museum, De Toth's remake similarly melds elements of mystery with images of the macabre into a satisfyingly frightful elixir.(read more...)

In many slasher
films that were coming out by the thousands in the 1980s, rarely did
we get to follow the killer as our main character, rarely did we
invest an emotional attachment to the killer while also being
terrified of them at the same time, and rarely was it done with true
realism and craftsmanship. Maniac succeeds on all of these
counts. While many see it as just a pure exploitation film, with
nothing but misogynistic, mean-spirited attitudes and desensitized
gore and carnage on the surface, underneath, it really is a
psychological horror film, and an intelligent one at that. Yes, it
was made on the cheap, a film to be shown on a double bill on 42nd
Street or at a drive-in. But, when thoroughly examining it, it's a
calculated study on the dark human mind.(read more...)

Wherever
there is a Hollywood sci-fi or horror movie blockbuster, there is
usually at least one shameless low budget cash-in lurking somewhere
in the wings. Nowadays we have the likes of the Asylum Studio and
Transmorphers,
but back in the 1970s and 80s, it was often an Italian film producer
turning out some product or marketing campaign superficially similar
to the latest hit and Contamination
is a perfect example of
this. It was sold as a clone of Alien,
and although they both share some roots in 1950s sci-fi movies, unlike Ridley Scott's film, Contamination
fails to expand much on the template, making for a bloody but boring
viewing experience.

Banned for decades in its native Japan,
director Teruo Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men is
considered a landmark of Japanese horror, in particular the "Ero
guro" (erotic-grotesque) genre, which combines horror with bizarre
sexuality. Based off the literary works of author Edogawa Rampo,
Horrors of Malformed Men is a surreal, psychedelic fever-dream
of a movie, where logic and neat, tidy story progression are set
aside in favor of a more dream-like atmosphere. While decades of
increasingly extreme horror movies, both from Japan and elsewhere,
have muted the film's shock value, it remains a uniquely bizarre
film.
(read more...)